We covered the first announcement of HTC's plan in an article titled "HTC's new phone will be powered by blockchain" back in May of this year.

Now, Litecoin founder Charlie Lee confirmed his role as an adviser to HTC and their new blockchain enabled phone, tweeting:

"Met the HTC Exodus team last week and was really excited to hear the phone will support LTC and Lightning Network on Litecoin natively! I will be an advisor as I see having a secure crypto phone that makes LN simple is needed for mass adoption.

P.S. No, they will not remove BTC. "

HTC describes the new phone and project as:

"Our vision is to expand the blockchain ecosystem by creating the world’s first phone dedicated to decentralized applications and security. With the release of the HTC Exodus we can now make this a reality.

With over two decades of experience manufacturing the world’s leading smartphones, and shipping over 100 million phones, we believe we can help reshape the internet with the HTC Exodus. Join us and together we will make decentralization a reality."

The phone is set to release in the 3rd quarter of this year.  Updates will be posted on their website at https://www.htcexodus.com

------- 

HTC announced their upcoming phone titled 'Exodus' is being built by and for users of cryptocurrency and blockchain tech.   But what does that mean?

Well, the phone's hardware is optimized to support decentralized apps (dApps), and there's a built in 'universal wallet' to support storing your cryptocurrencies. Head of the project at HTC Phil Chen tells TheNextWeb;

“Through Exodus, we are excited to be supporting underlying protocols such as Bitcoin, Lightning Networks, Ethereum, Dfinity, and more. We would like to support the entire blockchain ecosystem, and in the next few months we’ll be announcing many more exciting partnerships together.”

Previously, Chen was heading up HTC's Virtual Reality headset project.

Here's where things get a bit murky in my opinion - many are saying these phones could come to rival Ledger and Trezor for hardware based 'cold storage'.   But it's important to remember - a phone connected to the internet, running Android OS, should not be considered an alternative or an equally secure storage method to an offline device. In fact, i'll bet that these phones which double as a cryptocurrency wallet will become a prime target for attacks, and hope HTC is aware of this when developing it.

Until I can hold one in my hand and see if this 'optimized' blockchain phone's performance can really do anything other phones can't do with the right software, i'm undecided on if this is worth being excited for or not.  But i'm definitely curious to find out.